Leveraging Real-Time Information to Enhance Financial ...

Leveraging Real-Time Information to Enhance Financial Planning, Management, and Control

by Jodi KellerA Technical Brief

Jodi Keller, technical director of marketing communications, has close to ten years of technology

marketing experience, and received an MBA from Adelphi University. Jodi came to Information Builders

in 1998 to manage marketing programs for the company's ERP Solutions Divisions, before transferring

to the Business Intelligence Products Group in 2001 to lead the product marketing team. In her current

role, she is responsible for overseeing the creation of all direct marketing materials, collateral, and Web

content for Information Builders and iWay Software.

Introduction

Consolidation and Globalization

Regulatory Requirements

The “Enron Effect”

Critical Success Factors for a Financial ReportingStrategy

Financial Reporting and Analysis Checklist

The WebFOCUS Financial Reporting Platform

One Solution to Address All Your Financial Information Needs

Unparalleled Data Access

Rapid Application and Report Development

Secure, Manageable End-User Reporting

Advanced Analytical Functionality

Robust Integration With Excel

Flexible Portal Interface

Dynamic Report Output, Distribution, and Archiving

Internationalization

Case Studies

Milton Hershey School

Equitable Resources, Inc.

Summary of WebFOCUS Financial ReportingPlatform Features

Conclusion

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Table of Contents

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In today’s new – and often uncertain – economy, knowing exactly where you are and how you’re

doing is more important than ever before. Therefore, a complete, consolidated view of corporate

and financial performance is crucial to any organization’s success. But a fast-paced and volatile

business environment, combined with rapid merger activity, global expansion, and the

development of new e-business strategies, have made it increasingly difficult to combine, analyze,

and distribute information about operations and finances. With an ever-increasing amount of data,

in a growing number of sources located across multiple departments and business units,

companies must find an easy and cost-effective way to access it, and transform it into valuable

information that will enhance strategic planning and management.

According to the CPA Letter, the official newsletter of the American Institute of CPAs, many

observers maintain that there is a disconnect between the information provided in financial

statements and the information needs of investors and creditors, as well as a widening gap that

exists between the needs of “new economy” companies and “old economy” financial reporting.

Additionally, businesses are under mounting pressure to generate financial reports faster and

more often, and allow for more frequent distribution of crucial financial information.

To streamline financial processes, satisfy the financial information needs of people inside and

outside the organization, and gain a full understanding of overall performance, companies must:■ Have a consolidated, enterprise-wide view of financial status, and compare actual results to

estimates and goals

■ Obtain the real-time information needed to keep budgets and forecasts up-to-date, and

enable dynamic resource allocation

■ Conduct in-depth analysis of financial and other data to monitor vital trends, uncover

opportunities, and quickly identify problem areas within the business

■ Share crucial financial information with decision-makers throughout the organization to

enhance processes at the business-unit or departmental level

■ Deliver timely and highly-accurate financial statements and reports to investors and creditors

■ Comply with stringent regulatory reporting standards

Introduction

1 Information Builders

2 Leveraging Real-Time Information

But recent trends in today’s business climate are having a significant impact on the financial

reporting landscape, making the need for comprehensive, timely, and accurate financial analysis

increasingly urgent.

Consolidation and Globalization

Financial reporting and analysis have been complicated by rapid merger and acquisition activity,

causing significant problems as numerous accounting departments must suddenly merge into

one. Integrating the disparate reporting systems of these separate departments is an issue

that must be resolved immediately, if the new entity wants an accurate idea of how well it’s

performing financially.

Increasing international expansion has also added to the complexity of corporate financial

and performance reporting. Merging far-flung business units means more than just integrating

multiple systems and meeting varied general ledger requirements. Currency issues and

disparate international accounting rules will also pose significant challenges.

Regulatory Requirements

According to a survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Financial Executives

International (FEI) Research Foundation, 88 percent of financial executives are concerned

about the increasing complexity and costliness of meeting accounting and financial reporting

guidelines. One factor that is dramatically impacting regulatory requirements is the increasing

intricacy of today’s business environment, which has resulted in more complex business

transactions and created a need for more stringent rules to properly account for those

transactions.

Additionally, providing financial information in the various formats mandated by multiple

external audiences – including regulatory organizations – can be extremely time-consuming.

Business must present critical financial data in different ways for different recipients such as

reports required by the SEC, IRS, and FDIC; printed annual reports and financial statements for

investors; and credit applications for banks and other creditors.


Organizations also face numerous statutory and regulatory requirements related to the storage

and retention of financial records and information. IRS and SEC guidelines indicate that specific

financial documents, such as tax and auditing records, must be retained for a certain period of

time. And most public accounting firms recommend that budget reports be kept for a minimum

of two years, payroll records for a minimum of six years, and actuarial reports, pension and

profit sharing records, year-end financial statements, and general ledgers should be kept

permanently. Document retention policies also vary from industry to industry. Government

agencies, for example, must store various procurement information related to proposals,

pricing, and contract performance for at least three years. Therefore, businesses must be able to

organize and store financial reports and documents so they can be easily located and effectively

accessed if and when they are needed.

The “Enron Effect”For years, the SEC has noted worrisome trends related to the integrity of published financial

statements, according to the CPA Letter. Now, the fallout from the collapse of Enron, and the

subsequent accounting disasters uncovered at major corporations such as WorldCom and Tyco,

are making the jobs of both CFOs and CIOs far more complicated. Financial reports will be under

intense scrutiny, and organizations will be forced to guarantee the accuracy and honesty of

business and financial status information.

Gartner refers to this changing climate as the “Enron Effect,” and believes that the growth of

knowledge-intensive enterprises has affected the ability of most corporations to accurately

report their financial performance. Therefore, significant changes to auditing practices and

accounting standards, as well as reporting regulations, are needed. As a result, businesses will

be required to disclose more information, more often, about their activities and financial status,

and high-ranking executives will be held accountable for ensuring that published statements

fairly reflect a company’s financial position, results of operations, and cash flows.

One example is the recent Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the corporate reform legislation passed by

Congress in response to the string of financial reporting scandals. As a result, several regulatory

organizations have modified their guidelines. For example, the SEC will now require quarterly


10-Q reports to be filed 35 days following the close of a quarter (up from 45 days), and annual

10-K report deadlines are now 60 days after the end of a company’s fiscal year, instead

of 90 days.

This white paper will illustrate the benefits of a complete financial reporting and analysis

solution, and tell you what’s needed to address your most critical financial information needs

and meet your corporate performance goals. It will also provide an overview of Information

Builders’ WebFOCUS financial reporting platform and demonstrate how WebFOCUS solutions

can be used to build and deploy a powerful, real-time financial reporting and analysis

environment. Finally, we’ll present some examples of how our customers have used WebFOCUS

to enhance financial management.


Most organizations have already deployed software solutions to streamline their financial and

accounting activities. However, the primary purpose of these systems is to process financial

transactions. They may include some simple, standardized reports, and offer some limited

analytical capabilities, but are not designed to support in-depth financial analysis or generate

sophisticated financial reports that incorporate data from various enterprise systems.

As a result, financial executives and analysts have often relied heavily on IT staff to address

their most complex information needs. But often, there is a delay in the delivery of requested

reports, interfering with an executive’s ability to leverage that information to obtain an up-

to-the-minute status of the business, or make on-the-fly decisions as conditions change.

Additionally, because IT professionals have limited understanding of financial and accounting

operations, the delivered reports often do not fully meet the executive’s needs.

A complete financial reporting and analysis solution must enable CFOs, controllers, analysts,

and other end-user consumers of financial information to quickly and easily turn business data

into valuable insight about corporate financial performance. Additionally, they must have access

to consistent, accurate information that will enhance financial planning, management, and

control processes.

To satisfy the broadest range of financial information needs for various types of users, a

financial reporting and analysis solution must be able to:

■ Provide real-time, as well as historical information, so financial executives can make

decisions based not just on what has happened, but what is happening

■ Integrate and combine enterprise-wide information residing in various systems across

multiple departments and business units

■ Support development and deployment of a variety of financial analysis applications such as

budgeting and forecasting, as well as creation of virtually any type of financial report,

including profit and loss statements, balance sheets, and income and equity statements

■ Facilitate and accelerate decision making by enabling nontechnical business users to easily

access, navigate, and analyze real-time financial information, without IT or other staff

involvement

■ Ensure that enterprise data is as easy to read and interpretable as possible, by presenting it

in a variety of formats, including graphical views

Critical Success Factors for a FinancialReporting Strategy

■ Tightly integrate with today’s most popular tools, such as Excel (which is used for financial

planning by 80 percent of global companies)

■ Make information widely accessible through finance or enterprise portals

■ Automatically notify key decision-makers when critical conditions or issues arise

■ Enhance global financial processes by addressing worldwide reporting requirements

Financial Reporting and Analysis Checklist

In order to address all the above requirements, the software you select to support your financial

reporting and analysis application(s) must provide the following features.

■ Broad data access capabilities for a complete picture of financial performance, including

direct, real-time access to:

■■ Popular financial packages such as SAP, PeopleSoft, Lawson, and J.D. Edwards

■■ Multidimensional cubes such as Hyperion Essbase and Microsoft Analysis Services

■■ Any enterprise data, in any source, on any platform

■ Powerful and flexible tools for rapid development of comprehensive financial reporting

applications:

■■ Integrated environment for efficient application deployment and management

■■ Intuitive interface for easy report creation

■■ The ability to generate sophisticated financial reports and handle complex calculations

■■ The ability to handle data stored in highly volatile and varying hierarchies, such as the

Chart of Accounts, with minimal maintenance

■ Maximum usability for nontechnical financial professionals – so they can satisfy their own

information demands:

■■ The ability to deploy self-service applications and centrally managed reporting environments

■■ The ability for end users to easily create their own ad hoc reports and conduct in-depth

OLAP analysis

■■ Flexible data presentation options, including graphs, spreadsheets, Web pages, and PDF files

■■ Tight integration with commonly used financial analysis tools, such as Excel■ Dynamic delivery and management of information so it’s accessible by the right people, at

the right time, with the ability to:

■■ Push reports to users on a scheduled or alert-driven basis

■■ Distribute information via e-mail, the Web, and wireless devices



■■ Make information available on a broad scale via custom or third-party portals

■■ Store reports and other electronic financial information to comply with document-

retention regulations

■ Support for global financial reporting, planning, and management by:

■■ Reading and interpreting any local language data

■■ Handling all formatting – case conversions, dates, numbers, and currencies

■■ Incorporating multiple currencies into a single report column

■■ Providing the same user interface in a variety of foreign languages


WebFOCUS is a suite of comprehensive, tightly integrated business intelligence solutions that

helps people turn data into relevant and consistent information – giving them valuable insight

into their business operations so they can solve problems immediately and seize opportunities as

they arise. With WebFOCUS, any user throughout the extended enterprise – including employees,

managers, partners, and customers – can report on and analyze data from any enterprise system

using nothing more than a Web browser. Information can also be dynamically distributed to

anyone via wireless devices, and e-mail, in any format, including ad hoc and production reports,

Web self-service applications, OLAP, spreadsheets, documents, charts, and portals.

One Solution to Address All Your Financial Information Needs

With the WebFOCUS financial reporting platform, you can satisfy all your financial information

requirements at the point of business where decisions are made.■ Executives and managers can get a high-level view of corporate and financial performance

via portals and Key Performance Indicator (KPI) dashboards

■ Analysts can generate forecasts and conduct complex analyses with OLAP capabilities

and integration with Excel

■ Non-financial business users can monitor financial trends at the business-unit or

departmental level with customizable reporting environments and ad hoc reports

■ Investors can quickly receive financial statements and other corporate performance

information electronically, via e-mail or the Web

■ Power users and developers can build and deploy financial reporting applications quickly

and easily using a variety of developer tools

WebFOCUS provides all the features and functionality needed to implement a comprehensive

financial reporting and analysis environment – one that can help enhance financial planning,

management, and control by putting real-time information in the hands of those who need it.

Unparalleled Data Access

To closely and accurately monitor corporate performance, you need to look at more than just

the data in your financial and accounting transaction systems. WebFOCUS offers access to much

more than just popular financial packages such as SAP, PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards, and Lawson.

The WebFOCUS Financial Reporting Platform


It provides direct, native access to virtually any source – more than 85, including relational,

legacy, ERP, and CRM, on more than 35 platforms including S/390 mainframe – to empower

financial professionals to view and report on any corporate and financial information

throughout the enterprise.

WebFOCUS provides robust, direct access to OLAP engines such as Hyperion Essbase and

Microsoft Analysis Services. Essbase, one of the leading financial OLAP engines, is optimized for

various types of financial reporting such as profitability analysis, budgeting, and forecasting.

WebFOCUS enables automatic generation of flexible metadata directly from the Essbase engine.

With WebFOCUS, users can generate complex, multi-level reports from any data in Essbase

cubes – even large volumes of data or data with volatile relationships or custom idiosyncratic

hierarchies – and significantly reduce maintenance on those reports, even as hierarchies change.

With WebFOCUS, Essbase data is organized and reported on like any other data source.

WebFOCUS offers Hyperion Essbase users a simplified OLAP front-end that eliminates the need

for plug-ins such as Microsoft Excel. Users can also leverage WebFOCUS’ ability to drill through

to any source or related data.

WebFOCUS enables the generation of hierarchical reports directly against Essbase metadata,

improving and simplifying financial report development. Users have the unique ability to

partially traverse a dimension, i.e., the selection of only the desired data values, for a much

more effective data pull.

WebFOCUS also offers ETL tools and services for rapid deployment of financial-oriented data

marts and data warehouses.

Rapid Application and Report Development

Leading-edge development tools make building, testing, deploying, and managing financial

reporting applications efficient and cost-effective. The integrated development environment and

visually intuitive interface empower developers to simply point and click to create virtually any

financial report.


Many businesses must rely on a team of data warehouse and financial analysts to manually

produce monthly, quarterly, and year-end reports in spreadsheets – a process that is both

time-consuming and expensive – because traditional SQL-based tools are not well-suited for

financial reporting. For example:

■ SQL-based tools can only retrieve, group, and calculate data by columns; financial reports

often require account data to be grouped and calculated by rows

■ SQL-based tools can sort data only alphabetically or numerically, financial reports often require

items to be listed in order of liquidity or by some other corporate- or government-defined rule

■ Chart of Account hierarchies often change and SQL-based tools refer to account data

explicitly; therefore, financial reports built with SQL-based tools require constant

maintenance as a company’s Chart of Accounts changes

The unique financial modeling capabilities of WebFOCUS are designed specifically for creating,

calculating, and presenting financially oriented data, and enable developers to generate even

the most complex financial reports that are difficult or impossible in a single pass of the data

using SQL. With WebFOCUS, developers can utilize graphical tools to perform columnar or inter-

row calculations, and inter-account calculations to simplify rounding issues. These tools can

also be used for custom sortings and groupings, to rapidly produce balance sheets, profit and

loss statements, actuals, budget reports, and government-mandated reports such as 990.

Additionally, WebFOCUS’ metadata constructs dynamically read and understand the Chart of

Accounts, without referring specifically to account information. As a result, reports require

significantly less modification or revision when the Chart of Accounts changes.


WebFOCUS’ financial modeling tool can also dynamically generate summary statements from

detail in other reports and transfer balance sheet items across years. And, because it

automatically rolls up the data at report run-time, it eliminates the need to build data marts.

Secure, Manageable End-User Reporting

In order for financial professionals to address problems and make decisions in real time, they

must be able to immediately obtain the crucial data locked away in various enterprise systems.

WebFOCUS provides a managed reporting infrastructure that enables developers and

administrators to deliver simplified end-user reporting in a secure, business-oriented

environment that can easily be controlled and maintained. Financial professionals are

completely shielded from technical complexities and can instantly satisfy their own information

needs by running standard or parameter-driven reports, or by leveraging advanced functionality

such as ad hoc or OLAP analysis.

Advanced Analytical Functionality

OLAP Capabilities

WebFOCUS offers in-depth, built-in online analytical processing (OLAP) capabilities for

performing multidimensional analysis against any data source – including cubes, although

cubes are not required. Using simple and intuitive OLAP controls built directly into the report,

financial analysts can dynamically interact with the data and directly manipulate report

dimensions and measures. Data can be sliced and diced in an almost unlimited number of ways


to answer vital financial questions such as, “What products account for the largest percentage

of my profits?” Advanced functions, such as pivoting and ranking, can be accessed through the

graphical OLAP control panel.

The OLAP capabilities of WebFOCUS let you look at data in an unlimited number of ways to

help you uncover key financial trends:■ Selection criteria – Simplify the scope of reports by applying filters based on values

chosen directly from the database

■ Pivoting – Rotate report views to see the same data from different perspectives

■ Drill down – Examine the data underlying report values by drilling down to more detail

about the elements of a dimension hierarchy, or drill down on measures to get a clear

picture of what makes up a given value

A variety of styling features allow users to view financial data in the most useable way:■ Graphical data visualization – Immediately pinpoint high and low values via graphical

representation of the value in any row or column

■ Data orientation – Arrange measures into typical tabular columns that run horizontally, or

stack measures vertically by dimension

■ Charts – Automatically switch from tabular format to graphs such as pie charts, bar charts,

area graphs, line graphs, or even combination charts, with just a few mouse clicks


Knowledge Mapping

Users can intuitively identify, follow, and combine information from disparate data sources with

a powerful knowledge mapping feature. Knowledge mapping is a completely new paradigm,

opening the door to cross-textual analysis by letting users step off the usual predetermined

analytical paths to look at information in a new way. At the same time, it minimizes the number

of clicks required to obtain information, so users can quickly find and use data they might

otherwise not have considered.

Knowledge mapping enhances traditional analytical systems by:■ Automatically extending any report element to internal and external information sources,

such as Web and news searches and related company reports

■ Building reports with drill-downs that possess their own form of intelligence – valuable

information that is “remembered” and can be passed on to any other report or graph

■ Mapping into applications such as spreadsheets or Web-based searches without forgetting

the details of the user’s last request

Forecasting

According to Hackett Benchmarking, most financial departments wrongly focus on collecting

historical data, rather than trying to anticipate and prepare for future market conditions. In fact,

76 percent of the data companies collect is lagging or historical, while just 24 percent is leading

or predictive. As a result, a lot of time and money is wasted analyzing what was done, instead

of figuring out what should be done next.


Forecasting features are also available to help users identify trends in numeric data and predict

values beyond the range of values stored in the data source. Using OLAP controls, analysts and

other financial professionals can calculate moving averages, linear regression, or exponential

moving averages on measures that can be easily selected from a drop-down list.

Robust Integration With Excel

Eighty percent of companies today use Excel for financial analysis. But Excel users often spend

a significant amount of time manually keying and rekeying data in order to create spreadsheets

and conduct these analyses. And, according to IDC, the typical transposition error rate is as high

as 7 percent, putting the accuracy of financial information in jeopardy.

WebFOCUS helps address this issue by offering seamless Excel integration that’s unmatched

by any other business intelligence solution. Using just a Web browser, financial analysts can

generate WebFOCUS reports as Excel spreadsheets with all elements (i.e., field names, headers,

subtotals, sort breaks, and drill-downs) preserved. WebFOCUS can also dynamically generate

native Excel formulas. For access to detail data, users simply click on embedded hyperlinks in

Excel for the same drill-downs as those created in WebFOCUS HTML.

Financial analysts can also generate Excel Pivot Tables automatically. WebFOCUS supports

a direct save of report data to Pivot Tables, so analysts can utilize the powerful data mining

capabilities within Excel 2000 and XP.

Users working with financial or budgeting applications can use the WebFOCUS Excel write-

back feature to update central databases via spreadsheets. Financial professionals can

easily enter or change information in financial data sources by simply altering the cells of

their WebFOCUS report, then clicking the “save” button.



Flexible Portal Interface

Effective presentation of information requires maximum flexibility. That’s why financial

portals, as well as enterprise portals, are being deployed by many of today’s business

leaders. The dashboard capabilities within WebFOCUS allow developers to quickly design a

portal-like interface for financial reporting applications and personalize it for each user.

Existing portal infrastructures can also be fully leveraged to deliver crucial financial

information on a broad-scale throughout the enterprise. Organizations with an Enterprise

Information Portal (EIP) already in place can easily incorporate financial reporting content

into leading third-party solutions such as Plumtree, IBM WebSphere, Microsoft SharePoint,

CA CleverPath, BEA, Epicentric, Oracle, and PeopleSoft.

Dynamic Report Output, Distribution, and Archiving

In order to effectively track performance, information must be available when and how it’s

needed most. WebFOCUS gives users the flexibility of viewing information in a variety of

common business formats, including Excel, HTML, and PDF.

Additionally, reports can be pushed to defined users via e-mail on a scheduled basis, or as

alerts when critical business conditions arise (for example, when expenditures exceed

budget). Multiple requests can be efficiently handled by dividing a single report into multiple

sections and sending each segment to diverse people/places (for example, appropriate

department managers can receive a section of a monthly profit and loss report, containing

only the information pertaining to their area of responsibility). Reports can also be auto-

matically distributed to handheld devices such as Palm, Blackberry, and Windows PocketPC.


The WebFOCUS financial reporting platform also offers a powerful information archiving

facility for financial reports and other electronic content so financial professionals can

efficiently and cost-effectively store and retrieve crucial financial information, and easily

comply with government-mandated information retention laws. Key features include:■ Versioning – saving multiple versions of the same report/document

■ Expiration – setting a file’s expiration date or limiting versions to a specified number

■ Categorization – logically organizing documents by categories and domains so they are

easy to locate and retrieve

■ Security – keeping sensitive information protected from unauthorized users by defining

which users can view stored content

■ E-mail notification – an e-mail can be automatically sent to users to inform them when a

new file is added to the archive and provide them with a URL link to the information

Internationalization

WebFOCUS provides full support for global financial management and reporting because it’s

designed to work in all countries and for all languages. National Language Support enables

systems to process any local-language data by seamlessly reading and interpreting all

national characters embedded in any source and handling all sorting, case conversion, and

formatting of dates, currency, and numbers. Users can even generate reports with different

currencies (pounds, U.S. dollars, euros, pesos, etc.) displayed in a single column of data, so

a single financial report can provide accurate information about multiple geographic regions.

National Language Version capabilities display all components of the WebFOCUS user

interface in a variety of foreign languages, so users around the world can easily generate

financial reports.


Milton Hershey School

Institution Overview

The Milton Hershey School, a coeducational residential school located in Hershey, PA,

supported by a $60 million endowment created through the transfer of Hershey Foods stock,

provides a sound education and a wholesome environment at three state-of-the-art schools

and 104 separate residential homes.

The Challenge

The school needed to simplify the report-generation process and find a more efficient way to

manage and track costs. Obtaining and sharing important financial information regarding

budgets and expenditures was a cumbersome process. Financial reports, generated from

data maintained in the J.D. Edwards integrated financial software system, were centrally

printed and distributed to house parents and department heads on a monthly basis.

Additionally, reports contained only summary and year-to-date information, so the finance

department had to get involved when more detail was needed.

The Solution

Using WebFOCUS, the Milton Hershey School built and deployed the Financial Control

System (FCS), an intranet-based application that provides real-time cost tracking to more

than 300 house parents and department heads. Users can track actual expenditures and

determine if they are falling within their budget constraints. Integrated security keeps

sensitive data protected by ensuring that users can see only the information relevant to their

business unit.

The Results■ Instantaneous access to financial information pushes responsibility for managing

expenditures and budget ownership down to the appropriate level

■ Improved awareness allows for more effective budget control

■ Employees gain a better understanding of how their decisions affect the bottom line

■ Easy-to-use interface significantly reduced training costs

Case Studies


Equitable Resources, Inc.

Company Overview

Equitable Resources, Inc., an integrated energy company that focuses on natural gas

production, transmission, and distribution and leading-edge energy management services,

serves more than 275,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers in Pittsburgh,

surrounding municipalities, and northern West Virginia.

The Challenge

Departmental budget reports were difficult to create and present due to the design of the

company’s accounting structure and intercompany allocation of charges. Monthly budget

reports were run from the accounting system, then distributed in hardcopy to each budget

owner, who would then review the printout and report back on any variances. Budget

managers often received five or six hardcopy reports each and had to manually enter the

data into spreadsheets to conduct further analysis.

The Solution

WebFOCUS was used to deploy a reporting application that allows more than 200 users to

access budget-related information via an intranet. Color-coding makes it easy for budget and

department managers to spot areas needing attention, such as an actual expenditure that

varies more than 5 percent from the budgeted amount, and users can easily drill down to the

details behind any budgetary issues that require further scrutiny. Security is built into the

application to ensure that budget owners can access only data related to his or her area of

responsibility.

The Results■ Streamlined budgeting processes

■ More efficient and productive budget performance reporting

■ Budgets can be more easily tracked on an ongoing basis

■ Managers gain a better understanding of how their financial activities affect the

bottom line


Summary of WebFOCUS Financial ReportingPlatform Features

Value

Unparalleled reach forreal-time information

Rapid time to market

Maximum usability fornontechnical financialstaff

WebFOCUS Feature

Provides access to and integration of anyenterprise data:• Popular financial packages (e.g., SAP,

PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards, Lawson)

• Multidimensional cubes (e.g., Hyperion Essbase)

• More than 85 other sources across 35 platforms

An integrated development environmentfor quickly building, testing, and managing financial applications:• Powerful, visually intuitive tools

allow for point-and-click creation of financial reports

• Robust financial modeling tool to handle complex, financially orienteddata and dynamically read varyinghierarchies such as the Chart ofAccounts, for rapid generation ofsophisticated financial reports such as balance sheets, profit and lossanalysis, and income statements

End users can easily access, navigate, andanalyze real-time financial information in the format/way that’s most useful to them with:• Self-service applications

• Secure, manageable end-user reporting environments

• Intuitive ad hoc, OLAP, and forecasting tools

• Report output in common business formats such as HTML, PDF, and graphs

• Tight integration with Excel, includingdynamic generation of native Excel formulas and Pivot Tables, so analystscan continue to use familiar tools

Benefits

Financial professionalscan obtain a complete,accurate, up-to-the-minute view of financialand corporate performance

Increases the efficiencyof delivering informationto financial users

Facilitates and accelerates decisionmaking by empoweringfinancial professionals to satisfy their owndemands for real-timefinancial information


Value

Robust report and information archiving

Broad delivery of information

Full support for globalfinancial reporting andmanagement

WebFOCUS Feature

An archiving facility makes it easy tosecurely store and manage WebFOCUSreports and other electronic documentsfor rapid retrieval and use in the future

Makes information widely accessible and deliverable to anyone, anywhere, at any time: • Developers can create a portal-like

interface for WebFOCUS financial applications

• Financial reports can be incorporatedinto leading third-party portals such as Plumtree, Microsoft SharePoint, and IBM WebSphere

• Dymamic distribution of information ona scheduled or alert-driven basis via e-mail, the Web, and wireless devices

Designed to work in all countries and for all languages:• National Language Support reads and

interprets national characters and handles sorting, case conversions, and formatting of dates, currencies,and numbers

• Analyze and compare financial datafrom several geographic regions byincorporating multiple currencies into a single report column

• National Language Version capabilitiesdisplay the WebFOCUS user interfacein a variety of foreign languages

Benefits

Reduces the costs associated with information managementand allows for efficientcompliance with documentand information retentionguidelines

Ensures that criticalfinancial information is available to, or can be received by, key decision-makers whenit’s needed most

Provides a worldwidepicture of financial andbusiness activities, andallows users around theglobe to easily generatefinancial reports


ConclusionAn organization’s success depends on its ability to fully understand its financial position

and accurately monitor its performance. In order to facilitate effective strategic planning and

management, financial professionals at all levels must be able to accurately monitor and

analyze critical, real-time information about operations and finances. But today’s fast-paced

and volatile business environment, combined with the increasing complexity of financial

reporting regulations, has made this more challenging than ever.

The WebFOCUS financial reporting platform delivers all the functionality needed to build and

deploy powerful, comprehensive financial reporting and analysis to users throughout the

organization. Crucial real-time data from any enterprise source can be put in the hands of

any user, in virtually any format, at any time – empowering CFOs, controllers, analysts, and

other end-user consumers of financial information to obtain valuable insight into business

activities so they can solve problems immediately and seize opportunities as they arise.

The result? Real-time access to accurate, relevant, and consistent information for enhanced

financial planning, management, and control.

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■ Cleveland,* OH (216) 520-1333

■ Dallas,* TX (972) 490-1300

■ Denver,* CO (303) 770-4440

■ Detroit,* MI (248) 743-3030

■ Federal Systems,* DC (703) 276-9006

■ Hartford, CT (860) 249-7229

■ Houston,* TX (713) 952-4800

■ Los Angeles,* CA (310) 615-0735

■ Metropolitan,* NY Sales: (212) 736-7928

Consulting: (212) 736-4433, ext. 4443

■ Minneapolis,* MN (651) 602-9100

■ New Jersey* (973) 593-0022

■ Orlando,* FL (407) 804-8000

■ Philadelphia,* PA (610) 940-0790

■ Pittsburgh, PA (412) 494-9699

■ St. Louis,* MO (636) 519-1411

■ San Jose,* CA (408) 453-7600

■ Seattle,* WA (206) 624-9055

■ Washington,* DC Sales: (703) 276-9006

Consulting: (703) 247-5565

CanadaInformation Builders (Canada) Inc.

■ Calgary (403) 538-5415

■ Montreal* (514) 630-1134

■ Ottawa (613) 233-0865

■ Toronto* (416) 364-2760

■ Vancouver* (604) 688-2499

■ Victoria (250) 995-8674

MexicoInformation Builders Mexico

■ Mexico City 52-55-91-71-14-61

Europe■ Belgium Information Builders Belgium

Brussels 32-2-7430240

■ France Information Builders France S.A.

Paris 33-14-507-6600

■ Germany Information Builders (Deutschland)

Dusseldorf 49-211-522877-0

Eschborn 49-6196-77576-0

Munich 49-89-35489-0

Stuttgart 49-711-7287288-0

■ Netherlands Information Builders

(Netherlands) B.V.

Amsterdam 31-20-4563333

■ Portugal Information Builders Portugal

Lisbon 351-217-230-720

■ Spain Information Builders Iberica S.A.

Barcelona 34-93-344-32-70

Bilbao 34-94-425-72-24

Madrid 34-91-710-22-75

■ Switzerland Information Builders

Switzerland AG

Wallisellen 41-1-8394949

■ United Kingdom Information Builders

(UK) Ltd.

London 44-208-9824700

Warrington 44-1925-820111

AustraliaInformation Builders Pty. Ltd.

■ Melbourne 61-3-9631-7900

■ Sydney 61-2-8223-0600

Representatives■ Austria FOCUS Informationstechnologie GmbH

Vienna 43-12-1136-3870■ Brazil InfoBuild Brazil

São Paulo 55-11-3017-5178■ China InfoBuild China, Inc.

Shanghai 86-21-5080-5431

■ Colombia Coransa

Bogota 571-635-0273

■ Finland InfoBuild Oy

Helsinki 358-9-7250-2250■ Guatemala IDS de Centroamerica

Guatemala City 502-361-0506

■ Gulf States ■ Bahrain ■ Kuwait ■ Oman

■ Qatar ■ Saudi Arabia ■ Yemen

■ United Arab Emirates

Al-Gosaibi Information Systems

973-274-090

■ Israel NESS A.T. Ltd.

Tel Aviv 972-3-5483638

■ Italy Selesta G C Applications S.P.A.

Genova 39-010-64201-224

Milan 39-02-2515181

Torino 39-011-5513-211■ Japan K.K. Ashisuto

Osaka 81-6-6373-7113

Tokyo 81-3-3437-0651

Simplex Solutions

Tokyo 81-3-5652-3180/81

■ Korea Unitech Infocom Co. Ltd.

Seoul 82-2-3477-4456■ Malaysia Optegra Sdn Bhd

Selangor 60-3-80240188

■ Norway iSolutions AS

Stavanger 47-51-44-47-44

■ Philippines

Beacon Frontline Solutions, Inc.

63-2-750-1972

Corporate Information solution

63-2-633-1321

■ Poland Compfort/Meridian Polska SP

Warsaw 4822-630-2660

■ Singapore

Automatic Identification Technology Ltd.

65-6286-2922

Legato Solutions and Services Pte Ltd.

65-684-63150

■ South Africa International Computers S.A.

(Pty.) Ltd.

Johannesburg 27-11-2335911

■ Sweden Cybernetics Business Solutions AB

Solna 46-7539900

■ Taiwan Galaxy Software Services

Taipei 886-22-3897722

■ Turkey Istanbul

Erdemsoft 90-212-257-5555

Key Soft Ltd. 90-216-428-5933

■ Venezuela InfoServices Consulting

Caracas 58-212-763-1653

Toll-Free Numbers■ Sales and Information

(800) 969-INFO

■ VAR and Reseller Information

(800) 969-4636

*Training facilities are located at these branches;additional locations are available.

Corporate Headquarters Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121-2898 (212) 736-4433 Fax (212) 967-6406 DN7503856.1203

www.informationbuilders.com [email protected] Headquarters 150 York St., Suite 1000, Toronto, ON M5H 3S5 (416) 364-2760 Fax (416) 364-6552 For International Inquiries +1(212) 736-4433

Copyright © 2003 by Information Builders, Inc. All rights reserved. [25]All products and product names mentioned in this publication are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Printed in the U.S.A.

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